INDIA AND THE GLOBAL PLASTICS SUPPLY CHAIN, EMAP, LONDON 2004

Françoise Pardos, Pardos Marketing, February 2006

Introduction

This paper title is both very broad and very limited.

It refers to India, and it should, but there are specialists here much more knowledgeable and in the very core of things, as major players, than any outsider from far away could ever be.

Moreover the global scene is much wider than the close neighborhood of India, and even than the much broader Asia and Middle East.

Therefore, within this framework, and the title of the topic as it was given as compulsory figures, as they say in ice skating, I will try to treat the story with my own vision, free skating, to do it my way. So please forgive me if I stray away from the rigid outline.

The key line is to try placing India in the more general Asian, Middle East, and world picture, through the Twenties.

Highlights

The time frame for reflexion is what can be called The Twenties, starting about in 2020, only half a generation away, not farther from us now than the late Eighties,1985-1990, a time that most of us remember, and many of us were already in their professional lives.

The major change, highly visible, is the fantastic growth of Asia, an historical phenomenon that never before happened in the history of mankind, so fast and so vast.

This growth is totally contrary to the dire previsions that were made fifty years ago about the outlook for Asia, the teeming populations, destined to be poorer and poorer, for ever. By the way this shows how all long term forecasts must be taken with a sizable pinch of salt…

What is happening in Asia took two generations or less.

The world is fascinated with China, and forgets about India. It could be better that way, better for India, thus getting the better of two worlds, in the stream of things and a little off from raging globalization.

Which model of civilization by 2020-2030??? A very open question.

The essential question may be the oil peak. Will it happen? When? Has it already happened? Will it go slow or fast? What imagination is needed to cope with the oil peak, or end oil as an energy source?

Anyway, oil was not made for burning; only Barbarians would burn this earth distillate, refined and cultured organics that took hundreds of million years to elaborate. Modern mankind operates like the worst hunters gatherers who had the excuse of ignorance, and burnt forests, killed wildlife for survival. The present world knows, or should, and must still endeavor to save this extraordinary oil, from which all petrochemicals and derivatives are made of, all of the last seventy year civilization.

In the recent history of the world,

Europe was the nineteenth century
America was the twentieth century
Asia will be the twenty first century

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